Therefore, we know about God that He loves and shows pity on His creatures, and also that He is the source of wisdom and knows how to govern everything concerning us. Nothing is impossible for Him, but everything is subject to His will. We must also realize that everything He does is for our benefit and we must accept it with thankfulness...as from a benefactor and a good lord even if is troublesome. For everything is done with right judgment, and God, Who is merciful, does not overlook even the smallest sadness that we suffer.

Saint Dorotheos of Gaza

Source: Daily Lives, Miracles, and Wisdom of the Saints and Fasting Calendar

Kindness and compassion towards all living beings is a mark of a civilized society. Racism, economic deprival, dog fighting and cock fighting, bullfighting and rodeos are all cut from the same defective fabric: violence. Only when we have become nonviolent towards all life will we have learned.

The human spirit is not dead. It lives on in secret . . . It has come to believe that compassion, in which all ethics must take root, can only attain its full breadth and depth if it embraces all living creatures and does not limit itself.

It is demanded of us, Christians, that we receive these heavenly and most sweet tidings {the Gospel} gratefully as they are sent from Heaven, and that from a pure heart we always give thanks to God our Benefactor, Who so freely had mercy on us, and that we show holy obedience and compliance in all thankfulness. For conscience itself instructs and convinces us to be thankful to our Benefactor. He loved us who are unworthy. Let us also love Him Who is worthy of all love. Love requires that we never offend the beloved. God is offended by every sin. Let us keep away from every sin and let us do His holy will that we may not offend Him as our compassionate Father and Benefactor.

Saint Tikon of Zadonsk

Source: Daily Lives, Miracles, and Wisdom of the Saints and Fasting Calendar

Thy pure image do we venerate, O good One, asking forgiveness of our sins, O Christ our God; for by Thine own will Thou didst ascend the Cross in Thy body, to save Thy creatures from the bondage of the enemy. Thou hast verily filled all with joy, since Thou didst come, O our Savior, to save the world.

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Source: http://www.antiochianladiocese.org/ (Apolytikion in Tone 2) from a service of The Holy Orthodox Christian Church

In the beginning, passion and pain were not created together with the body; nor forgetfulness and ignorance together with the soul; nor the ever-changing impressions in the shape of events with the mind. All these things were brought about in man by his disobedience.

A human being is a part of the whole, called by us the “Universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.